"Dad...The Wall That Should Never Have Been There

Vanessa had not gone far.

Daniel found this out through his solicitor, Graham, who called on the third morning to inform him that a woman matching Vanessa's description had visited the offices of a competing firm the previous afternoon and spent ninety minutes with a partner there.

"She's building something," Graham said.

"I know what she's building." Daniel was standing in his kitchen, the same kitchen where he'd eaten breakfast for four months while Claire was forty feet below him.

He hadn't been able to sit down in this room since.

"How fast can you move?"

"That depends on what you have."

"I have seven years of transfers.

Original documents and photographs of the originals.

A second set of accounts under a shell company she controls.

And a witness."

A pause on the line.

"The witness is your wife?"

"Yes."

"She'll need to give a full statement.

The photographs need to be authenticated.

And Daniel — if Vanessa has counter-documentation with Claire's signature, we need to be ready for that."

"We're ready."

"Then I can move quickly.

But I want to ask you something first." Graham's voice shifted slightly.

"How did Vanessa get access to your accounts for seven years without you noticing?"

Daniel looked at the window above the sink.

"I trusted her," he said.

"She came with references.

She'd worked for my father's firm before his retirement.

I thought she was — I thought she was loyal."

"To your father's firm, or to your father?"

The question sat in the air.

"I don't know," Daniel said slowly.

"Why?"

"Because I've been doing some checking since you called yesterday.

Vanessa worked for your father for eleven years.

She left six months before he retired.

And the first transfer in the records your wife photographed — the very first one — was made nine days after your father signed the business over to you."

Daniel set his hand flat on the counter.

"She was already in position," he said.

"It looks that way."

"She wasn't stealing from me." He said it quietly, working it out as he spoke.

"She was finishing something she started with my father.

Or something my father started with her."

"That's a conversation you may need to have with your father."

Daniel's father was seventy-three years old and lived forty minutes away and had not, to Daniel's knowledge, done a dishonest thing in his life.

But then again, Daniel had not known about the room behind the wall either.

"Set the meeting," he said.

"For tomorrow.

And Graham — I want a forensic accountant in that room."

He ended the call.

He stood in the kitchen for a long moment.

Then he picked up his phone again and dialed a number he hadn't called in four months — not since he'd stopped believing there was any point.

It rang three times.

His father picked up.

"Daniel." The old man's voice was warm, unhurried.

"I was wondering when you'd call."

"Were you," Daniel said.

A pause.

"Yes," his father said.

And something in the single word told Daniel that Graham had been right — that this conversation was not going to be the one he'd expected, and that his father had been waiting for it, and that whatever came next was going to change the shape of everything he thought he knew about his own life.

"I think we need to talk," Daniel said.

"I think so too," said his father.